By Jay KT
Four international creators reaching millions across social media traveled through Zhejiang, turning their cameras toward ancient water towns, bamboo forests, mountain temples, and landscapes far beyond China’s familiar megacities.
For millions of people, discovering a new destination no longer begins with a travel guide. It begins with a screen.
A drone dives between enormous mountain peaks. A filmmaker disappears into a bamboo forest. Boats move quietly beneath stone bridges in an ancient water town. A waterfall appears on a phone screen somewhere in Los Angeles, New York, or London, and suddenly someone wants to know where it is.
That is increasingly how the world travels before it travels.
As part of the “Discover China Through Zhejiang” International Cultural Exchange Program, four international creators with million-scale social media audiences brought that process to Zhejiang, China, documenting a province that offered something very different from the images of China most familiar to Western audiences.
Social media creator and actor John Maggi (@realjohnmaggi), photographer and filmmaker Harish Kumar (@childishharish), cinematic travel creator Nolan (@nolanontherun), and professional FPV filmmaker Parker Sheppard (@pshepfpv) participated in the campaign, sharing their journeys with audiences across Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.
Together, the four creators reach millions of followers worldwide. But the scale of their audiences was only part of what made the project interesting. Each creator sees the world differently. Instead of asking four influential creators to produce four versions of the same tourism campaign, the program gave them three very different journeys through Zhejiang.
The result was not one picture of China. It was many.
The China John Maggi Didn’t Expect
For John Maggi, the journey through Hangzhou and Wuzhen was built around contrast. Wuzhen offered the China of another era: canals running between traditional buildings, boats gliding beneath stone bridges, and narrow streets following the waterways.
Then came Hangzhou. West Lake, Longjing tea fields, and centuries of cultural history remain deeply connected to the city’s identity. Yet Hangzhou is also closely associated with China’s technology sector, digital economy, and emerging technological innovation.
“I had a completely different picture of China in my head before this trip,” Maggi said. “What really surprised me was how many different sides of it we experienced in just a few days. Wuzhen felt almost timeless, then in Hangzhou you have this completely modern, innovative city. It wasn’t what I expected, and that’s probably what I enjoyed most about it.”
For an international audience accustomed to seeing China through images of Shanghai skyscrapers or Beijing landmarks, the contrast offered a new perspective: ancient China and contemporary China were part of the exact same journey.
Harish Kumar Found the Atmosphere Between the Landmarks
Harish Kumar traveled the same route, but his Zhejiang looked different. A Seattle-based photographer and filmmaker, Kumar’s visual work focuses on atmosphere, light, movement, landscape, and the emotional character of a place.
That approach made Wuzhen and Hangzhou natural subjects: reflections moving across canals, mist over tea fields, and moments between destinations that could easily disappear from a conventional itinerary.
“There was something about the atmosphere here that really stayed with me,” Kumar said. “The reflections on the water, the tea fields, the old streets, even the light felt different. As a filmmaker, I’m always looking for places that make you feel something before you even start filming, and Zhejiang had a lot of those moments.”
Followers do not only care where someone travels; they care how that person sees it.
Nolan Went Looking Beyond China’s Cities
For cinematic travel creator Nolan, the journey moved in another direction entirely. His route through Anji and Taizhou traded city streets for bamboo forests, mountains, temples, and rural landscapes.
Anji presented an endless emerald horizon of bamboo, while Taizhou offered dramatic mountain peaks, Buddhist heritage, and the landscapes around Tiantai and Shenxianju.
“I honestly didn’t expect China to look like this,” Nolan said. “You hear so much about the cities, but then you get out here and you’re surrounded by bamboo forests, temples, mountains and these incredible landscapes. It completely changed the picture of China I had in my head.”
Put a cinematic shot of Zhejiang’s bamboo oceans or misty mountains into an American viewer’s feed, and the first reaction is simple: Where is that?
Parker Sheppard Flew Into “Hidden China”
If Nolan’s Zhejiang was cinematic, Parker Sheppard’s was built around movement and speed. The professional FPV drone pilot traveled south through Wenzhou and Lishui, where the terrain provided an unusually dramatic canvas.
At Yandang Mountain, steep rock formations rise above valleys. At Baizhangji, water plunges down sheer mountain cliffs. In Lishui, historic communities around Songyang and ancient villages such as Chenjiapu sat embedded along steep hillsides.
Sheppard’s FPV camera moved dynamically through these spaces, diving down cliffs, accelerating between rock formations, and revealing hidden valleys:
“I’ve filmed in some incredible places around the world, but Zhejiang kept surprising me,” Sheppard said. “Every day the landscape changed, mountains, waterfalls, villages, rivers, and from the air, some of these places looked almost unreal.”
What Happens When Millions Discover a Place They Weren’t Searching For?
Social media has reversed traditional travel behavior. People used to choose destinations and then search for inspiration; now, inspiration chooses the destination for them.
Someone scrolling Instagram in Los Angeles might have no intention of searching for Yandang Mountain, but a 20-second FPV flight puts it in front of them anyway. The sequence is reversed: See it Feel something Find out where it is Consider going.
Los Angeles itself has become one of the global centers of that transformation. LA Wire has reported extensively on the city’s expanding creator economy, where creators, platforms, brands, and travel boards operate as part of a connected commercial ecosystem. Travel sits naturally inside that ecosystem.
From a Reel to a Real Journey
There is, however, an important difference between getting someone to watch a video and getting someone to travel there. The next stage of the Zhejiang project is focused on turning the creators’ journeys into actual travel products for international travelers:
- Classic Poetic Journey: Connects Hangzhou and Wuzhen, combining West Lake, water-town heritage, and tea culture with contemporary innovation.
- Healing Nature Retreat: Connects Anji and Taizhou through bamboo landscapes, outdoor experiences, mountains, and Buddhist heritage.
- Mountain & Sea Cultural Tour: Moves through Wenzhou and Lishui, focusing on waterfalls, historic cliffside villages, and cinematic landscapes beyond China’s best-known international destinations.
The social post is no longer the end product, it is the beginning of the journey.
Maybe China Doesn’t Need One Picture
China is difficult to summarize, and Zhejiang made that complexity visible. John Maggi encountered a place where a historic water town and a tech hub coexist. Harish Kumar found atmosphere in quiet tea fields. Nolan found wild bamboo oceans and mountains. Parker Sheppard captured waterfalls and villages tucked into cliffs.
Four creators entered the same province and returned with four distinct interpretations. For millions of global followers, Zhejiang offered something increasingly rare in the age of endless travel content: the chance to be genuinely surprised.
